


It's a magical place

by synoa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-03 19:45:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5304452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synoa/pseuds/synoa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the Battle of New York, Clint keeps hearing mentions of Tahiti. Is there something strange going on?</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a magical place

**Author's Note:**

> When I started writing this I aimed at 2000 words, not even sure I would reach them. Then subplots and Bobbi Morse happened.  
> The prompt was "Santa isn't really based in the North Pole; He's based in Tahiti; and Clint has just one wish this year" but the result is not very Christmassy, sorry...  
> Thanks to my two wonderful betas, Kendra and eyesxsewnxopenx, for cheering me up and in general doing an awesome job with the little time they had! Any remaining error is entirely my fault.

Life after Loki feels surreal. He has moments where he remembers very clearly what living through the blue haze was like. In those moments, he hears Loki orders in his head and watches as his body obeyed.

“Get rid of them.” 

“Take me there.”

There are a lot of cases involving shooting arrows at people, sometimes to kill, most of the time to stop. It's not like he still is under Loki's control, these things are more like panic attacks. He feels when they are about to happen, sees when just a little bit of blue creeps into the corner of his eye. Usually, he has enough time to go somewhere to be alone and wait, frozen in horror and guilt, for the worst to pass. It's always about something that he did, a choice he took while wanting to please Loki. Now instead, he sees all the possibilities and consequences, everything he didn't care about when he was doing it. One of the worst parts, in the aftermath, is realizing how easy it was to be unmade and how easy it would be to make him do it all again.

He spends way too much time thinking about what he did, but he doesn’t have anything else to do. Half of the base looks at him like he is a monster which he feels. In some way, he considers the episodes like penance. He shouldn't forget what he did while he was under Loki; it's only fair something is there to remind him. Then there are the nightmares. Those are about the possibilities, things that could have gone differently, like aiming for Fury's eye instead that for his chest, or being in the Hulk cage with Coulson and Loki, shooting at Coulson. The mornings after that last dream usually he spends refusing to answer anything his psychologist asks of him. He knows he has killed Phil, but at least it wasn't his weapon. Natasha keeps saying that he wouldn't have killed Coulson like he didn't kill her or Fury. He doesn't believe her.

He has talked with his psychologist about Loki, killing people on the Helicarrier, fighting aliens and nearly killing Natasha. Dr. Heiss still hasn't asked about Phil, and they will only talk be about Agent Coulson because only Fury and Natasha know for sure about his crush, and he doesn't think either of them has told his psychologist. Fury must have better things to do.

Clint would do all of Hill’s paperwork just for something to do; he is restricted out of all the training rooms and command centers, so he has gotten back to one of his favorite hobbies, stalking the air ducts. He probably needs the stealth and espionage training anyway, even if he misses shooting. He is not entirely sure he won't see the faces of all the agents he killed the first time he takes his bow in hand, so he is not in a hurry to break into the range. He keeps stalking the vents, and while Fury most certainly knows he is there, they both know they can't keep Clint out of them for any length of time without placing him in a cell. And for whatever reason Fury doesn't want to do that. Clint is not complaining.

The first time Clint hears about Tahiti he doesn't make much of it. He thinks that whoever ended up on the mission was pretty lucky. Tahiti in May is the place of postcards.

He hears again about it a second time, and it immediately sound strange. Tahiti is a small island, too small for two missions to happen there in less than a month. It could still be the same mission, maybe it was one of the long ones, or there was some fallout, these kind of things happen all the time. It could also be a code name for something, so while it does sound strange, he doesn't think too much about it.

It's almost a month before he hears about Tahiti again and he has almost forgotten about it, but he is watching Hill at the command center at 10 pm on a Saturday, which means the center is mostly empty and when Hill receives a communication he can hear both sides of the very short conversation

“How is he?”

“He is responding well, ma'am.”

“Very well, I'll inform Doctor Streiten we can start the next phase.”

The lack of identification feels weird, even on the most top secret missions you identify yourself, usually with some kind of preset phrase. Hill just straight up asking information is strange.

Hill is opening a new communication and Clint can't see the number, but judging by how many times she pressed keypads it should be an internal one.

“Dr. Streiten speaking.”

“Hello, Doctor, your work in Tahiti is done.”

And just like that Hill closes the channel and goes back to work.

That excludes the hypothesis of just a mission in Tahiti, wouldn't make any sense to have a medic there and just call him back at some point. It must be a code for a mission or project. But why one of the best physicians in SHIELD? What are they doing? Who were they talking about?

Clint keeps thinking about the weird exchange, after a night of more stalking and no sleep he goes into Phil's old office and boots his computer. He has avoided going there fearing Loki’s memories would be worse in a place that has so much of Phil. But he hadn’t been here since before Pegasus and hadn’t met Coulson during the attack, so it doesn't trigger an episode, but he can’t avoid thinking about Phil here. The office still smells the same, and he is hit with so much longing. He sits on the sofa, hugs a cushion and tries to get a lid on his feelings. It’s nothing new, he has lived with them for some time now. Still, Phil is dead and he tells himself it was not his doing but Loki's fault. Both his psychologist and Natasha have been trying to make him accept that Loki controlled his mind and he did the best to fight it. They are only partly successful. 

When he manages to get a grip on himself, he goes back to Phil’s computer. He doesn't have any clearance anymore, so if he wants information he'll have to be sneaky about it. Hacking Phil's computer doesn't take much time, they spent so much time together Clint knows how Phil generated his passwords. Computers aren't his strongest talent, but he's learned a little something over the years. And soon enough he has access to all the things known to level 7 agents.

There is no mention of Tahiti anywhere. Which definitely excludes that this was just a simple mission on Tahiti. This is something off the records or with a clearance level higher than 7. For what Clint knows, SHIELD hasn't done something completely off the record since the early years, when they were smaller and less controlled, without the Council breathing on their necks. It could be something like that; Loki did change the world, Fury could feel the need to run a mission very quietly without the Council hearing about it. But what kind of mission? And is this really important or is it just the boredom? Or worse, is his mind keeping him occupied with paranoia to avoid thinking about the important stuff?

He tries to dig some more. Goes to the file of Dr. Streiten but there is nothing out of the ordinary there, nothing weird. He decides to try looking into personnel records, cargo shipment, travel routes and see if something doesn't add up. It'll take time, but time is not a problem these days. It's been 98 days since the Battle of New York, and all he has to do is speak to Dr. Heiss. He wants to talk to Natasha about this, but he hasn't seen her in a month. Sure there is work to do, but it almost feels like Fury is trying to keep her off base, and maybe he is paranoid, but maybe it has something to do with all this. Maybe Fury knows that she'd uncover what is going on in a heartbeat. It's not really a problem, even with the restrictions he has time and he knows what he is doing. He is going to discover what is going on.

Dr. Heiss, of course, notices that he is up to something. If Clint were on top of his game he maybe would manage to hide it but he is not, the last weeks have been hard on him. The psychologist is sharp, and Clint feels like he is making real progress working with her, but it is a slow and extremely tiring process. And in this case, her perceptiveness does not work in Clint’s favor.

When he finds the pattern he is looking for; he feels all the tiredness creep up on him. He sleeps for less than two hours and goes to his appointment, and he looks so bad that Dr. Heiss doesn't let him get away with it. She says he looks like he did in the first days after Loki. She asks him what is going on and everytime he answers

“It's classified.”

Even when she threatens going to Fury. It's bullshit. They both know as part of the medical staff her clearance levels don't work that way.

He keeps refusing to tell her, and that's how he ends up in front of Fury and his death glare. It doesn't work on him anymore, not really, well if he stands a little taller it's pure coincidence. Hill is also there but she is partly in the dark, and he can't actually read her expression.

“Doctor Heiss tells me you are involved in something she hasn't got clearance for. So, neither should you. Want to tell me what this is about?”

“Tahiti, sir.”

“What about it? Nothing is going on in Tahiti.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“So what is classified about Tahiti?”

“Nothing, it's just how I am calling this little project I have for new weaponry.”

And they all know he is lying, but if Fury wants to play it close to the chest, Clint can do the same. He is not ready to show his cards; he has found files about the shipment of medical machinery that didn’t include a description of the machinery and the particular ward, just that they were designated to Bethesda and three nurses that were assigned part time jobs but were paid full time. But he doesn’t know what is in Bethesda, just that Fury went to great lengths to cover it up.

Still, Fury does what Clint expected and dismisses him, so he goes back to his bunk, via corridors, and then to Phil's office, via vents.

He keeps following whatever track he can find, in hopes of uncovering the bigger picture. The restriction to the base is not a problem; it's just that if working for years with Phil Coulson has taught him anything it's the need to be prepared and not jump into action if he can avoid it.

He tries not to make assumptions about what is going on. Whatever it is, it seems to have started right after Loki and seems to be closely connected with Fury. And this may totally be wishful thinking but nobody has disabled Phil’s access to the database. Also, Nat has told him, right after the battle, that she’s seen his grave, but SHIELD hasn’t organized a funeral like for the other SHIELD operatives that died on those days (by his hands). But Phil Coulson’s file still reads “Killed in Action”. Clint has checked, multiple times. So he doesn't let himself hope that Phil might be alive. He doesn’t want to miss something important just because of what he wishes.

Three days later, he still hasn’t made any progress whatsoever. He goes to his appointment with doctor Heiss and right before he goes back to his bunk Victoria Hand enters the room. 

“Agent Hand” he greets. She is probably the only agent inside SHIELD who still scares him. Oh, he knows people like Hill, Blake, Sitwell or Garrett could beat him in a lot of situations, but even if he doesn’t like most of them, he can read them and has an idea of what they will do in a given situation. Agent Hand, he doesn’t know. Not for lack of trial on his part.

“Agent Barton, with me.”

He doesn’t have any alternative but to follow her to her office and wonder what this will be about. It could be about his infiltration of the SHIELD database, but why would Fury send Hand?

She closes the door and leaves him standing while she sits behind her desk. He can’t avoid noticing how different her office is from Phil’s, not anything big, except the absence of a couch. It’s in the small things, but it feels impersonal in a way Phil’s never did.

“Agent Barton, I was just assigned as your new handler.”

This he was not expecting.

“Does that mean I am not restricted to base anymore?”

She smiles, lifting just the corners of her mouth. Clint finds it unsettling.

“Not yet, you will have to requalify as a field agent first.”

“Agent Morse will be waiting for you in 25 minutes in training room three. You’ll both report to me at the end of the day,” she adds, after a moment.

“Yes, ma’am” he answers.

“Dismissed”

Clint goes to change before he meets with Bobby. She greets him with a tired smile and he tries to get a real one out. They go through a set of stretching exercises and then hit the mats. Clint loses the first match and when she is pinning him down he starts to see blue again. It hasn’t happened in weeks, but he has mostly kept to himself. He warns her with strangled voice and she lets him go. He stays there trying to regain his breath while the blue goes away. It's not as bad as they used to be.

“Want to talk about it?” asks Bobby as soon as she sees him breathing better.

“Haven’t fought anyone since Loki,” he answers.

“Want to go again?”

“Absolutely,” he answers. 

She smiles at him and goes back to a fighting stance. After a moment, he follows her. By the end of the first day, he only feels the blue creeping in a time once every three times Bobby beats him. 

After their report to Agent Hand, he goes back to Phil’s office to try and dig some more, but he falls asleep in his chair looking at balance sheets. It quickly becomes a routine, in the morning he goes to Dr. Heiss and then trains with Bobby. At night, he goes back to Phil’s office, works a little bit and falls asleep either in the chair or on the sofa.

After four days of training, he only loses one every other match with Bobby and he hasn’t felt this good in weeks. 

He knows Fury deciding to have him requalify three days after they talked about Tahiti is not a coincidence. He is keeping Clint busy so that he won’t have time to uncover what Fury is doing. He is tempted to ignore orders and concentrate on the mystery, but he doesn’t want to go against direct orders. After Loki, his position is already too fragile. Even without SHIELD, he wouldn’t be alone, he’d have Natasha and maybe the rest of the Avengers, but he has friends here too. And if Phil is alive in Bethesda, being fugitive from SHIELD wouldn’t help Clint get him back. So he completes his physical training with Bobby, moves on to tactical tests and then, finally, to the range. 

He is reasonably sure the blue vision episodes are a thing of the past, but Dr. Heiss has agreed being in the shooting range again will be the final test. If everything goes well this week, she will clear him for active duty again.

Johnsonn, the range master, gives him a P228 and the feeling of being armed again is wonderful. Between the blue vision episodes and dealing with the guilt, he hadn’t realized just how exposed he felt being disarmed.

The P228 was the first handgun he learned to shoot with, and he knows it perfectly. He hits all the circles made by the numbers in his usual pattern and then moves on to his P30. It’s his gun of choice, and while it’s not the same thing as his bow, it still feels like an extension of him when he is holding it. He loses himself a little bit in the shooting motions, moving through the rifles towards increasingly bigger weapons. He is almost tempted to ask for the gun Phil used on Loki, but he doesn’t think he can joke about it, so he keeps his mouth shut, and tries to best his old records, just for something to do.

They don’t give him a bow, that first day, but after he has gone through all the firing weapons, on Thursday morning Johnsonn hands him a recurve bow.

If the P30 had felt like an extension of him, holding a bow, even his least favorite one, feels like having a part of himself back. He gets lost in the repetitiveness of draw and release, the feeling of the string against his lips, the muscles of his arm against the power of the bow. When he finishes the quiver Johnsonn gives him a new bow, a compound this time and Clint starts all over again.

On Friday afternoon, Victoria Hand gives him a field agent status and lifting the restriction to base. She has to, considering that after a slow start with the more physical stuff he has aced all the tests they have given him. What she does have a choice on, is his new clearance level, and she gives him the lowest one for a field agent, a basically useless level 4. Still Natasha and Bobby are waiting for him when he is done, and he wants to go celebrate with them, but he also wants to tell Natasha everything about Tahiti, now that they are finally in the same place for more than an hour.

They look at each other and then both look at Bobby. The Mockingbird is not as skilled at reading people as Natasha, but she has known them both for some time, and while she considers Clint reckless on his best day, she trusts the two of them.

“If the two of you are planning to wreak havoc, I want in.”

“Not here.” says Clint.

They go to Natasha’s place because she has the highest level and is the one without SHIELD's recording devices in the apartment. Clint walks them through what he heard and found, but all the files Clint has found that didn’t add up aren’t there anymore. Nat says she believes him and starts looking for signs of tampering, but Clint deflates. Fury won’t make the same mistake again, this time he won’t leave any trail.

Then Bobby asks “Do you think this is about Coulson?”

Clint and Natasha look at her.

“Why Coulson?” asks Natasha.

“The look on your face when you were talking about this, Clint. As if solving this could put anything back in the right place. I’ve been working with you in the past month. Yes, having something to do, finally getting back to fight made you alive again, but not like this, not this much.”

He doesn’t know what to say because she is right.

“Well, I know something is going on. And I hope, even if I try not to let myself, that it means that Phil Coulson is still alive. But I did my best not to let that hope direct me while investigating this thing. It’s just that the pieces I have seemed to fit perfectly with this hypothesis”

Natasha goes to the kitchen and comes back with scotch and glasses.

“Ok, let’s talk this through and try to find out.”

They don’t get drunk, all of them too engrossed in discussion to drink much. They come to an agreement that this could have something to do with Phil and since neither Bobby nor Natasha, who are both more skilled with computers than he is, can't find any trace of the missing files, they decide to make a little trip and see what is going on at the base. The three hour car trip is for nothing. All they find is a hidden floor under a storage one but it's empty and has clearly been cleaned very thoroughly not many days before, judging by the dust.

The trip back to New York is depressing; they found proof something was there, so at least the day won't end with Bobby questioning his sanity. Natasha and Bobby both surprise him by saying that they will start looking if something else comes up, particularly because if they moved everything in a hurry there might be traces of the physical move. Clint thanks them, smiles and thinks again Fury won't make the same mistake two times. At the same time he doesn't want to give up, it has never been an option in his life, and it certainly won't start now.

He spends Sunday digging and Monday morning in briefings. On Tuesday he leaves for his first mission in six months. He gets to be eyes up high with a rifle, and it's good to be back, even if he spends half the time pretending he doesn't miss a different voice in his ear like he misses his bow. It ends with the head of a drug dealing group in handcuffs, ready to be interrogated about a supplier that has developed a cocktail with extreme side effects. He doesn't have to shoot one bullet, mostly thanks to Agent Hand's ability to wrangle the junior agents assigned to this mission. She gains respect points in Clint's book, but he still has no idea where to start reading her.

He divides the downside time after the mission between the range and Phil's office. Clint has tried his best not to change anything in the past months, but it still shows that the only person that has been here is Clint. The chair is not in the right place, the stacks of paper are not properly sorted in manila folders and the annotations are not in Phil's writing. He doesn't know why he is noticing this kind of things, all of a sudden. Maybe because he spent the weekend actively acknowledging the possibility that Phil's alive. Maybe because it's the first time in years his post mission routine doesn't involve coming report to Phil in this office.

He is checking all the major operations that took place in the last few months, thinking that maybe one of them was used to hide Tahiti when he notices that there isn't an approval signature or a background and fallout analysis for a mission in Nicaragua that had two dozen agents deployed in April. Before Loki.

Clint saves copies of the mission files and all the files of the agents involved and goes back to his bunk. He falls asleep trying not to think that Phil is dead after all. He dreams in shades of blue and hears Loki laughing in the background. He wakes up drenched in cold sweat, not rested at all and pretends the only important thing right now is having a trail to follow.

He keeps training, going on missions and digging SHIELD files. It takes him a month and a half to follow a path of carefully covered missions that weren't quite what they were supposed to be. He has found a mission dated right before he started working for SHIELD and now he just wants to understand what is going on in the agency that took so much of his life. He doesn't tell Nat; he tells himself he wants to wait until he has proof, but in reality he doesn't want to tell her he may have brought her into something he hadn't anticipated. He doesn't work in Phil's office anymore. He has again access to the database from his computer, and if sometimes he enters with somebody else credentials he hopes nobody will notice. He goes there on the bad days, lays on the couch and tries to pretend he can hear his voice like if this was a mission. 

The problem is the trail stops there and for weeks he tries to pick it up again without luck. Then Natasha Romanoff storms into his bunk at three in the morning with a look of rage on her face. Clint doesn't go into defensive mode mostly because she isn't armed and he can see the anger is not directed at him.

“I've found Coulson,” she says.

“What? Really?”

“Yes, we are going. Now!”

Clint gets dressed and tries to wrap his head around the fact that Phil might be alive after all. He follows her across base, and it's only when they are in her car directed to the airport that he dares talk again.

“Want to tell me what is going on?”

“I finally found where Fury moved Coulson when he cleared the floor in Bethesda. I went to confront him and he just told me to grab you and go. And to consider this our Christmas present.“

“Present? I'd say we should give him something back. How about a punch in the face?”

Nat laughs. “Maybe something more creative. We'll think about it.”

“Fine. Where are we going?”

“You'll see.”

They take a flight to Los Angeles and then one to Tahiti.

Phil waiting for them at the airport is apparently Fury's idea of an additional Christmas present. He looks tired and weak and this, if nothing else, is what convinces Clint that he really has Phil in front of him, that this isn't a dream. When they get to him, Phil hugs both of them in a small pile and Clint doesn't want to ever let go. He doesn't smell exactly the same, there aren't traces of gunpowder and of his usual cologne, but it's still Phil.

Phil seems to be overwhelmed as well, and isn't in a hurry to let go. Unfortunately people are starting to look at them, so they let go and walk towards one of the taxis.

Clint can't stop looking at him.

They wait until they are back at Phil's place before starting with questions, but Phil really knows less than they do. Apparently Fury left him with a burner phone to contact SHIELD if he needs to and no secure terminal to access the SHIELD database. He doesn't even know how they saved his life.

On their first evening Phil asks if they want to walk on the beach with him. Natasha says she is still tired from the last mission and goes to sleep after a meaningful glance to Clint. Apparently she doesn't need to worry, Phil has his life sorted out much better than Clint does. They walk for a little while, talk about what has happened in the last months, how they have felt. They talk about Phil thinking he had lost Clint to Loki and Clint believing Phil was dead. About hoping, against all odds, that each could get the other back. When Phil gets tired they settle down and look at the moon's reflection on the ocean. For a while they don't talk, then Phil looks at him with hope and maybe love in his eyes. 

“Clint? Can I kiss you?” 

He nods.

It's everything Clint had dared hope and more.

  
  


**EPILOGUE – six months later**

Clint is panicking and nervously checking things in the file in front of him. Phil can tell by the state of his hair and by the fact he doesn't notice his approach. He's had a lot of practice in noticing things about Clint, after all it has been years since he started having feelings for him. Even if, until last December, he completely missed Clint having feelings of his own.

“Clint?” he calls.

Clint looks up and Phil steals his file.

“You are ready, Fury is going to believe you and you will finally be able to stop look into this thing on your own. And Natasha will be there.”

He doesn't know what he has found, Clint hasn't told him. Just that it is important and has to do with SHIELD. Phil has spent a lot of time convincing Clint to trust Fury with this. There are only two people he trusts more than Nick Fury, even if he still doesn't know how he saved him or why there is a grave with his name on it.

“Thanks. I love you.”

They smile at each other; this is a relatively new development they can afford to be saps.

“I love you too. Let's go now, we have places to be.”

They kiss and go in opposite directions.

“Good luck on your firearm certification,” Clint calls after him.

Phil turns

“I don't need it.”

They smile and go.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment and come hang out on [tumblr](http://synoaponga.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
